


For Anyone Who's Interested

by triwizard_tardis



Category: Free!
Genre: Help, In relation to Define Family, Sad, This will make you cry, its 4am this time, you will need context
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-09 23:44:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6929209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triwizard_tardis/pseuds/triwizard_tardis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karma's nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Anyone Who's Interested

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a nightmare I wrote taken from the context of a fic I just posted called Define Family. If you haven't read that, this won't make any sense. Un-betaed.

The gym looked so big. The yellow fluorescents warmed the warehouse-like ceiling, comprised of exposed white, metal beams and concrete. The twenty treadmills whirred in synchronization. The mirror plated walls expanded each other exponentially, opening the room infinitely.

The blue mats in the corner were oddly saturated in brown; so were the big green and purple yoga balls. In fact, the fluorescents burned with that brown, and the deceptively infinite scene was dyed in sepia.

"You gonna return his look-alike?"

The man stood as tall as Papa. But he looked bigger somehow. His face, like the rest of the room, was tinged in sepia. His smirk grew like the Cheshire cat's, and he grew like Alice. The mirrors, on the other hand, shrunk towards the boy on the mats. Haruka Nanase sat cross-legged in front of him.

Karma blinked, and so did Mr. Nanase. He frowned, the bridge of his nose crumpling in horror when Mr. Nanase's expression mimicked his own. Suddenly, the mirrors on the walls weren't the only ones in the rapidly shrinking room.

"His look alike?"

Nanase's look became glossy, shiny in the sepia film. Karma reached out to touch the indescribably familiar sheen. His hand met cool glass and the world explodes in blue.  
Blue like his eyes.  
Blue like Nanase's eyes.

He blinked and the Nanase behind the glass looked younger. Karma's own age even. He felt his face twist in fear and watched helplessly as young Nanase's did the same. The child-Olympian's hair began the curl, and Karma brought his hand from the glass to his face. He touched his quivering lip, moved up his drained cheek, then came to rest on one oceanic eye. It felt slightly smaller than it should have, sharper too.

_"Look alike?"_

"Karma," called a voice like aged charcoal. The boy's head snapped behind him in search of the voice. "It's time to go," the voice said, sternly, charred and blackened by years of cigarettes and wrangling desperate, broken children.

"Haru," came a voice like maple syrup. The boy's head whipped back to the glass. Behind it, the child-Olympian with the curly hair looked lovingly into the eyes of Mr. Makoto Tachibana.

Mr. Tachibana touched underneath Nanase's chin, and the boy grew into a man. A man with straighter hair.

"Haru!" Makoto repeated with such relief. His green eyes locked with the object of his affection, his desire, his love. He looked like he'd found home.

_"I'm gonna be your Papa from here on out, if that's okay with you, Karma."_

"Papa," Karma felt himself ask. The glass shook, blurring the image like a wind-tousled pond.

"That's Mr. Tachibana," explained that tired, charcoal voice, "He found his family. He's done for the day."

Karma's bottom lip quaked like a fault line.

"But, that's my Papa," he tried softly, pointing at the blurred glass pane he didn't remember turning away from, and looking pleadingly at a face as gray as its voice. The face shook slowly, forlorn but mostly annoyed. Karma tried again, but his voice cut louder this time:

"That's my Papa now!" he demanded to an ever denying old head. "Yes it is! He is!" he insisted. The glass behind him cracked at the edges.

"He is! He's my Papa and he loves me!"

The cracks along the edge of the glass webbed to the center, collecting there.

"He's done for the day," the cigarette voice commanded.

"No!!" Karma shrieked, "Papa loves me!!" His sharp words shattered the glass and his surroundings -- an old pine table in a sunlit yellow room; what happened to the gym -- fell silent as the shower of glass concluded its song.

Karma felt green eyes boring holes into his back. He turned slowly to see the terrified look marring Papa's face. Nanase, next to him, looked stern. Tachibana gave Karma a remorseful smile. He knelt to the boy's eye level.

"It was nice meeting you," he offered pitifully, along with a professional handshake. Ghost-like tears flooded Karma's eyes, then fell viciously and silently.

"Papa?" Karma pleaded.

"Bye now, Karma."

Karma felt more than heard the cry that ripped through his throat.

"PAPAAAA!"


End file.
